This proposal requests partial support for a meeting on Carbohydrates as a Gordon Research Conference to be held at Colby College in Maine from June 19-24, 2011. The broad and long-term goal of this conference is to bring together glycoscientists from a range of chemical and biochemical disciplines to discuss unpublished research and define important questions in the field. The specific aims of this meeting will be to 1) bring together established and young investigators, including students and postdoctoral scholars, with every effort made to include women, minorities and the disabled, who work on the chemistry and biochemistry of carbohydrates;2) present the current state of carbohydrate synthetic, computational, and analytical tools with an emphasis on illustrating their abilities and limitations through applied examples in areas such as the development of diagnostics, vaccines, and other therapeutics, as well as with cutting-edge examples from academia;and 3) highlight emerging research areas and build interdisciplinary collaborations between synthetic chemists, analytical chemists, computational chemists/biologists/bioinformaticists, and chemical biologists to best tackle the obstacles to our understanding of the structure of, functions of, and therapeutic and diagnostic interventions based on carbohydrate interactions. The significance of this application is that this Gordon Research Conference will provide a unique international forum to bring together scientists with a range of chemistry as well as biology backgrounds with interests in carbohydrate chemistry and biology. The health relatedness of this application is that the discussions generated will help define the important questions relating to basic glycoscience and also those required for the development of therapeutic strategies needed to intervene in carbohydrate-mediated disease processes such as host-pathogen interactions and cancer. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE (provided by applicant): The Gordon Research Conference on Carbohydrates will bring together established and young investigators, including students and postdoctoral scholars, with every effort made to include women, minorities and the disabled, who work on the chemistry and biochemistry of carbohydrates to present the current state of carbohydrate synthetic, computational, and analytical tools with an emphasis on illustrating their abilities and limitations through applied examples in areas such as the development of diagnostics, vaccines, and other therapeutics, as well as with cutting-edge examples from academia. In addition, the conference will highlight emerging research areas and build interdisciplinary collaborations between synthetic chemists, analytical chemists, computational chemists/biologists/bioinformaticists, and chemical biologists to best tackle the obstacles to our understanding of the structure of, functions of, and therapeutic and diagnostic interventions based on carbohydrate interactions.